VII
Old Clinchell had found a man whom he could neither frighten, drive, nor purchase. As he hooked his heels into the sides of his loping mule, on his way from Andrest's shanty-boat, he was so angry that he could not think straight. He took his spleen out kicking the tough sides of the animal he rode; but the mule cared not the least, for old Durm wore no spurs, and his heels were broad, with no harm in them for a thick hide.
Gradually, out of his vehemence, an idea began to grow. It was an idea that looked as if it might be worth ripening and bringing to harvest. Clinchell regarded it with interest at, the first glimpse, and then with increasing satisfaction as he discovered the kind of bud it had. Its flowering gave promise of rich fruit.
He allowed the mule to stop its gallop, while he studied the notion that had sprouted in his fertile mind. His anger gave way to a grin of cruel satisfaction.
The tradition in the Dark Bend swamps that no one ever crossed old Durm Clinchell with lasting advantage was perfectly true. Abandoned claims, families broken up, fugitives none knew where, and oven graves proved that tradition. Old Durm's mental force and cunning had carried him up until he had the power that goes with owning vast areas of timber-land, with picking a thousand acres of cotton, with renting a score of outlying farms, with a checking account in banks amounting to thousands of dollars, and with the say to elect or defeat almost any office-seeker in Cypress County.
Old Clinchell was rapidly working out a plan to pull down the Deerport National Bank, and thus deprive young Andrest of his money. It had been a good deal of a blow to discover that the shanty-boater had won the five-hundred-dollar reward for Morlung. Many a young fool thought five hundred dollars, or even one hundred dollars, enough money to be married on. Suppose Andrest had that notion, and Clinchell's wilful daughter was so foolish as to yield to him?
His spies had told the planter that Sue Belle and Andrest often met out on the traces and down by the river. Andrest never came nearer to the mansion than the edge of the plantation. The daughter of a proud old planter trysting with a river-rat, with a shanty-boater! No wonder the old man had lost his temper and fired his bolts without taking good aim!
"I won't miss him any more!" he assured himself. "Next time that young lad 'll sure take all that's coming to him! He'll lose his money and he'll lose his—"
Clinchell allowed himself to chuckle. He was a shrewd old man, with a thousand wiles and ways, and he took an ignorant man's delight in smartness and trickery. First he must make sure that there was no loophole through which the young shanty-boater could escape his wiles.
"He's got two-three thousand dollars, and he could buy as good a lawyer as is to be had around for that," he told himself frankly. "I don't want any good lawyers mussing up my ideas—no, sir!"
The Deerport National Bank had long been rather exasperating to old Clinchell. Its brains was John Urgone, the cashier, who handled most of its business. Danton Lesgar, a retired planter, was the president, and the board of directors also included Attorney Falls and two sawmill men. Its capital was a hundred thousand dollars, and it had deposits of nearly two hundred thousand. It divided Cypress County business with the Planter Bank at River Bridge and the Logging Bank at Bandsaw, both of which were Clinchell's institutions, although he depended on trusted men to conduct them.
"I got to fix things real bright," Clinchell admitted to himself; "but I expect I can do that. Um-m!" He chuckled more than a little. "I been laying for that old Lesgar!" he went on. "Now I got him on a fifty-thousand-dollar paper—it 'll sure squeeze him some, settling that up! Wonder he didn't look into that timber he took for security! Just the timber onto that land, and there's not much but cut-overs. There isn't five thousand profit, taking that timber off. Sho! Those old political scoundrels thought they'd peace-bond me, eh?"
Old Clinchell was cunning. As security for his bond, he had mortgaged the timber on swamp-lands that were already cut over. President Danton Lesgar hadn't been careful what he took as security.
"All I got to do is forfeit that fifty-thousand-dollar peace bond," Clinchell laughed. "Then I'll let them fight for it—old Lesgar's responsible. I knowed I'd pinch him yet. First thing they know, their little old bank 'll be hanging up a notice of readjustment!"
Clinchell was good-natured now; things were going the way he wanted them to move. At one sweep he would rid himself of several annoyances. The Andrest affair was no longer an annoyance, but a means to an end, which did not make the shanty-boater's future any safer as a speculative proposition—not if old Clinchell had figured the matter correctly.
The planter was in no great hurry to put in operation the plan upon which he had determined. He must wait until the proper moment before breaking the Deerport National Bank and young Andrest by the same blow. In a week or two the bank would be moving cotton in large quantities, and the planters who owed it money could be depended on to be slow in taking up their notes, most of which would run till mid December, or even over the New Year.
Moreover, there was to be an issue of bonds by that levee district, and there had been some question as to whether Clinchell's banks or the Deerport National would get them on the bid.
"They'll get 'em!" Clinchell grinned. "I'll buy 'em from the referee in bankruptcy!"
He rode home in a more complacent frame of mind than he had had since his suspicions regarding Sue Belle and the shanty-boater had been thoroughly aroused. He could see no flaw in his latest scheme, the success of which largely depended on his keeping his own counsel and working out the details himself. He couldn't trust even his personal attorney now.
Sue Belle saw her father enter the edge of the plantation, and she galloped out to meet him and ride home with him. They rode out on the cotton-haul road and watched the pickers. Then they went over to the gin, where the saws were whisking the lint from the seeds for baling in the sighing steam-press.
Watching her covertly, Clinchell could see no sign of abstraction in his daughter. She turned with free mind from cotton-picking to cotton-ginning, and a little later to sawing oak and loading cars on the tap-line siding.
"I'm shipping ten car-loads of riving hickory logs next week," he told her. "They use 'em in making automobile wheels. Like as not you'd like to go tripping around somewheres? How would you like to go for a trip around some of those big cities, eh?"
"Why, I hadn't thought, daddy," she exclaimed doubtfully; adding: "Course I'd like to go—when?"
"Oh, not right away—pretty soon, though." He seemed to study the subject a little while before he added: "Some time we'll up and go, or you'll start off, if I'm too busy."
"I'd rather have you go 'long, daddy," she declared.
"Well, maybe it 'll be so I can."
She left him at the sawmill office, romping away toward the plantation. He wanted to look over the log-camp reports, to make sure that the tree-fellers were keeping up with the schedule and that the haulers were getting in the cut according to program.
He looked into the dusty book which showed the cut-overs, and he verified his memory as regards the timber on the lands covered by the peace-bond mortgage. There were many trees on the tract—all goose-egg, trees, wind-shakes, dead hearts, punk woods, thunder-splits, and the hke. The sound timber had long since gone through the mills, and the land was too low for cultivation, even if it were ditched and drained.
"Lesgar was an old fool, taking a mortgage on that land for the peace bond," Clinchell thought to himself. "There's about ten thousand dollars' worth of culls there, and that's all there is, even on this market."
He rode to the house in time for supper. After supper he sat out on the veranda in the warm of the twilight, with Sue Belle near him in her own rocker.
Sue Belle was grave in demeanor this night. She looked at the far field, her cheeks flushed. Sometimes she looked sidewise at her father doubtfully.
Watching her as he did, old Clinchell did not fail to notice his daughter's nervousness. He held his peace, however, for he had learned not to rouse the young woman's temper by searching her mind too deeply. Besides, if he remained quiet, she was sure to reveal what was on her mind in due course. A wise old widower, he!
Sure enough, she drew a flat tin box out of her waist and opened it.
"Look, daddy!" She laughed, without exactly meaning to laugh. "Do you think these are pretty little tricks?"
She gave him the open box, and he saw two strange yellow sparkles in a bed of lint cotton. They were of a size, and of the shape of two yellow pears, but bright as fresh-minted gold.
He poked them around with his forefinger, and held them to catch the last light of the setting sun.
"Nice little tricks!" he nodded. "Some pedlar come along?"
"No." She shook her head. "I—I just come across them."
She took them, closed the box, and tucked it into her waist again. She had lost none of her nervousness, though her color had grown pale.
Sue Belle was far from being a spoiled child, though she commonly had her own way. Once in a while, however, her father crossed her, sharply and emphatically. He felt that she was afraid of him this night, and he was certain that she was glad when the sun went down and the gloom of night spread across the bottoms.
He was not far wrong in his guess that she was thinking about Andrest. He felt that he had moved just in time to drive the shanty-boater out of the country. In a few days, now, everything would be ready for the execution of his plans.
He was not sorry when Sue Belle left him sitting there to go to her room. It gave him a chance to polish up the last details of his scheme.
In the morning he rode away early, took a gasoline speeder, and ran out on the tap-line to the trunk road, where he went over the books of the Planter Bank at River Bridge. From there he went on to Bandsaw, and looked into the accounts of the Logging Bank. Both institutions held notes of the Deerport National, and Clinchell smiled grimly when he figured up the total amount of these claims. Lesgar had been asking for extensions, which had been readily granted, of course. The obligations falling due a few weeks later were numerous.
Clinchell left directions with the two cashiers as to handling certain affairs of the Bandsaw and River Bridge institutions so as to prepare for the things he had in mind. In order to give the Deerport National ample rope, it would be necessary to extend some of their own obligations—which could easily be arranged through the banks at Mendova.
His day's work revealed how vulnerable Lesgar was. Clinchell had not thought about the subject before, but now he felt sure of an easy triumph over the Deerport institution. Cashier Urgone had been going out of his way extending credit to commissaries and independent sawmill men out in the Dark Bend bottoms. The Dark Bend country was Clinchell's by right of development, and these Deerport fellows had no call to go out there. Worse yet, they had taken particular pains to go after the Morlung reward money, and after young Andrest's account, when they must have known that it was a direct and personal insult to Clinchell.
"We'll see about that!" the old planter grumbled. "There's some people round these bottoms that need a lesson! We'll see about that!"
Instead of returning to the plantation, he took the train for Mendova, the business center of that part of the Mississippi bottoms. He put up in a hotel, and then called his sister on the telephone.
His sister was Mrs. Drury Waspe, a widow, who lived comfortably back on the Cluster Ridge at Provell. It was fifteen years since Clinchell had seen her, and at. least ten since he had heard from her, except indirectly. Hardly any one knew that he had a sister.
She was glad to hear from her brother, however, and begged him to run out and see her, which he consented to do. He abandoned his hotel room, caught the Ohio Night Special, and landed in Provell after midnight. Mrs. Waspe was waiting up to see him.
"Ho law!" he greeted her. "Why, Drury, you're younger than you were twenty years ago, and fine-looking! And I—I'm growing old!"
Then he poured out into her willing ears the story of his woes.
"You see how it is, Drury. You're society yourself; you're quality folks. She's like you are, Sue Belle is, and something has got to be done!"
She listened, nodding her approval to all that he said. When he declared that he must be hurrying right back home, she approved of that, too, although she had really expected to have him stay at least a week, and had intended to scold him for not bringing Sue Belle along.
He caught an early train from Provell, and before noon he was home again on his Dark Bend plantation.
"Where have you been, daddy?" Sue elle demanded. "I was getting scared almost to death!"
"Business—unexpected business—Mendova!" he explained and patted her scoldings away.
He went to sleep on a lounge for an hour or two to make up his lost rest—he told Sue Belle he couldn't sleep for the racket in Mendova—and then rode out to look at the cotton-picking records in the gin-office. As he passed the farther mound, a yellow girl ran out to intercept him.
"Sho, Marse Clinchell!" the girl whispered. "Sue Belle's jes' a meetin' that pore white trash, Andrest! I couldn't get to yo', suh; but two-three days ago they was out in the brake trace, an' he give her a sunthin' into a tin tobacco-box, an' she hollered out an' kissed 'im right smack on the lips—shore as yo're borned, she did! I yeard it, an' I was a stick-throw away, suh. Lawzee! Them two's co'rtin', shore as yo're borned, suh!"
"I'll 'tend to that, Disky. Here's a silver wheel. Don't you say a word what you've seen without I tell you to. I'll have you mule-whipped if you say a word!"
"Not a word, massa!" she grinned with delight, holding up the dollar. He rode on, scowling.
"Kissing that no-'count scoundrel!" he grunted. "Ugh! No wonder she was 'shamed of herself, showing me those little yellow tricks! Time that girl had some manners taught her, it sure is!"